writer on the charm of life in those past days, are too valuable to be laid aside unrecorded. “The keen intellects of the time,” he writes, “caught a glimpse of everything, desired everything, and grasped eagerly at every new idea. Only those,” he goes on to say, quoting Talleyrand, “could realise the joy of being alive. The childish present-day philosophy of optimism and effort fails to lend life a charm it never knew before. The most insignificant gallant of the Court of Louis experienced more varied sensations than any rough-rider or industrial king has ever been able to procure for himself.” Admittedly, the evils of the time cried aloud for redress of wrongs which were all to be washed away later by the river of blood; but these had been more ameliorated than aggravated by the scholarship of thoughtful writers. Wit, and the sense of beauty and delicacy of expression, carried, not unfrequently it is true, to affectations and absurdity, was the order of the day, binding men and women in links of an intellectual sympathy, whose pure gold was unalloyed by baser metal. Those _réunions_ in the salons of the great ladies, must have been delightful, thronged as they were with distinguished men, and with women, many of them beautiful, _spirituelle_, or both. But for the sparkle of true wit, the music of sweet voices, the ripple of verse and epigram, the popularity of those gatherings would not have been so long maintained. The atmosphere of them was sweet with the lighter learning of old Rome and Greece, and the gaiety of graceful modern rhymes, or the sentiment of the latest sonnet. The passing of centuries had now left far behind the barbaric clash of warfare, and widened the old limitations of mediævalism and Scholasticism. From the hour the cruel knife of Ravaillac stilled the noble heart of the great Henri, the times had ripened to the harvest of a literature resplendent with promise of illustrious names. Ever zealous for the glory of France, Richelieu founded the Académie Française; and later the college of the Sorbonne, where now he lies magnificently entombed, was rebuilt by him, and devoted to its old purpose of a centre of learning; and as of old, and as ever, men thronged from near and from afar to Paris for the study of art and learning, and to pay such homage to the modern Muses and enjoy their smiles, as good fortune might allow.